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Garmin Oregon 600 vs. GPSMap 64s

Now that I have a few months experience with the Garmin 64s and Oregon 600 in the field, I can say that the 64s is the best of the two. Although the touch screen on the Oregon 600 is very usable and is the best GPS touchscreen I've used, the Oregon's fatal flaw is that the software locks up. The screen freezes and the unit doesn't respond to any of the buttons. The only way to recover the receiver is to remove and reinsert the batteries. This happens several times a day and is simply unacceptable in a navigation device.

Does GLONASS Affect Battery Life?

When I started using the Garmin Oregon 600, I noticed that the battery life was much less than the Garmin GPSMap 62s. I attributed that to the touchscreen or the GLONASS receiver, which the Oregon 600 has but the 62s does not. I just received the new GPSMap 64s, which is the 62s updated to include GLONASS, and that gave me the chance to test the two under similar conditions. Much to my surprise, I found the battery life of the Oregon 600 to be about the same as the 64s, both with GLONASS enabled and disabled.

Garmin Oregon 600

Garmin Oregon 600

A Workable Touchscreen Trail GPS!

While touch screens work well on street GPS receivers, I've always preferred trail receivers with buttons. I've found touch screen trail GPS units to be unresponsive, hard to see in bright sun, and completely unusable with gloves. Marking my current position as a waypoint, which I'm constantly doing as I map trails, is a pain on older touchscreens. In the past I haven't been a believer in touchscreen trail GPS receivers. The new Garmin Oregon 600 is making a dent in that belief.

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